Time of Change
by James Jago
Summary: The Kuun-Lan and a large fleet are sent on a mission back to Kharak. The situation in which they find themselves is surprising to say the least!
1. Prologue

Transcript of intercepted transmission between two senior kiith council repesentatives made by Naabal intelligence units:  
  
"Afras-sa recieving."  
  
"Barak-sa here. We have discussed the matter, and we have decided to go ahead with your proposal. We will detach most of the Third Fleet and have them rendezvous with one of the Explorers."  
  
"Excellent! I'll send the Kuun-Lan."  
  
Pause  
  
"Are you sure that is wise? There is still some opposition to your choice of replacement commander." [Note: Somtaaw traditionally allow the leader of any enterprise or vessel to choose their successor upon their retirement. Our historians suggest that this dates from their religious heritage.]  
  
"He was my second choice after my tactical officer. She declined the promotion, and it was either the fighter group leader or some Dreadnought skipper who'd ignore every piece of advice she gave him and probably screw up the whole mision. We saw where that led with the Faal-Corum, didn't we?" [Note: We assume that this refers to an encounter with Imperialist forces in which the Faal-Corum and its fleet suffered a stinging and bloody defeat, at a loss of several thousand lives. The ship's CO was court-martialled and deprived of his command as a result.]  
  
"Merak made that decision in good faith, and his replacement has himself been replaced. Kindly refrain from sniping at him for an eror of judgement."  
  
"I'm not sniping at him, and it's no crime to make a mistake. But I'd be a fool if I didn't learn from that mistake, and avoid repeating it. Kheran's sharp enough to know that Tac-officer Kenrac has more expertise in combat group-level warfare than he does, and he'll take her advice a lot more readily than I did when I first took command. It's the next best thing to her taking over from me."  
  
"That he is also your nephew is mere coincidence, of course. Yes, I heard about that call he made to you. The people on the communications desk thought he was a most fetching shade of puce when he asked to discuss his recent promotion. I suppose if he'll scream blue bloody murder about nepotism he won't do so badly. It's the ones who insist they got where they did on their own merits when everybody knows who their uncle is that tend to prang asteroids."  
  
Laughter  
  
"True, true! Well, we'll find out soon enough if he does a good job. He's proved himself in combat, though; Distinguished Piloting Citation, Nomad Moon campaign medal, Sajuuk knows how many other decorations... We need more like him." [Note: Research into Afras Somtaaw-sa's nephew Kheran indicates that he has indeed won many awards for courage and skill in battle. One of these citations was endorsed by the CO of the Caal-Shto.]  
  
"Understood. You are certain that the slipgate leads to Kharak?"  
  
"Yeah, right place and right... ahem, time." Pause "Is this line secure?"  
  
"It should be, unless Nabaal have come up with some really good cryptography systems. There's more chance of the Soban becoming farmers, if you ask me." [Note: This remark caused some levity in our decryption room, and demonstrates a great deal of complacency among Somtaaw's upper echelons about our ability to penetrate their communications net.]  
  
"Okay. Wow. If this works then it will change history!"  
  
"The Galactic Council will go crazy if word gets out. We must have absolute secrecy; as far as the Kuun-Lan's commander is concerned, he is just searching for survivors of the Burning of Kharak. We will give them a mission update as soon as they are through the slipgate. I just hope the chrono-quantum shift won't affect phased telemetry communications." [Note: We are unsure what Barak-sa means by 'chrono-quantum shift'. It may refer to some property of a slipgate.]  
  
"I understand, though I don't like keeping them in the dark. Well, they'd think I was insane if I told them the truth. Afras-sa out."  
  
Remarks: It would appear that much of whatever mission the Kuun-Lan is being sent upon has been planned in face-to-face meetings, suggesting that perhaps Barak-sa's attitude to communications security is unique among Somtaaw high command. The precise nature of the Kuun-Lan's mission is unclear, and appears unconnected with their proposal for a multi-kiith mission to Kharak via the slipgate newly charted in the Faal-te dark matter cluster. Precisely how Afras-sa expects to 'change history' is a matter for conjecture at this point. One analyst presented the wildly improbable hypothesis that this slipgate may be one of the legendary time portals, or at least that the Somtaaw believe this to be so. This is of course barely credible, but there have been no other suggestions of even the wildest kind. 


	2. First Time In The Big Chair

It goes without saying that Sierra are the only people allowed to make any money out of this. A couple of characters from Reflections In The Garden are used with the author's permission, which I shall repay by warmly recommending the story to anybody who reads this. Anybody wishing to employ technologies, ship designs and modifications devised for this story does so with my blessing. There is some dispute how the name of the destroyed ship in Mission 2 of the original game is spelt, but I'm going with the one from the Cataclysm manual (see Ship Descriptions, specifically the bit about the Turanic Carrier).  
  
Kheran Somtaaw had always maintained that he was not a remarkable man. 'Mediocrity,' he had once remarked, 'is very much an undervalued personality trait.' Somebody who had seen his combat record might well ask what the hell he knew about mediocrity.  
  
He was the nephew of the Kuun-Lan's CO during the Beast war, and a member of a highly placed family within his kiith. A suitably well paid sinecure could have been his by virtue of his family's connections, but his family hadn't obtained said conections by taking that kind of attitude. Kheran had departed for the Sobaan Academy of Strikecraft Warfare, where rank and bloodline meant nothing, and distinguished himself as a fighter pilot. As one of the first to be born on Hiigara (exactly three months afterwards, his parents having been forced to make their own entertainment during the long periods in hyperspace between uncomfortably exciting bits), he had completed his training by 15 AHL, just in time for a mysterious distress beacon to very nearly cause the end of civilisation as we know it.  
  
It had been six months of the sort of war when people who didn't die got promoted rather hastily, and Kheran had finished the war a squadron leader before his 21st birthday in Kushan years; flying the ECM run that had stranded the Naggarok in the middle of a large crystal field to get blown sky-high by the Command Ship's seige cannon hadn't hurt at all [Author's note: I'm pretty sure the designers had this in mind when they put that in, though I personally never brought it off- a Soban salute to anybody who did!]. In the intervening two decades he had continued to gain steady promotions, having become commander of the Kuun-Lan's whole fighter wing four years earlier. He was on an equal pay grade with the ship's legendary Tactical Officer, Maala Kenrac.  
  
By all rights, Maala should have got the command position after Afras Somtaaw retired, and Kheran was more than a little shocked to recieve word that he had been given the job instead. He hadn't just been shocked, in fact; he'd been bloody furious!  
  
"For the love of Sajuuk, uncle, why me and not her?" he had demanded over a secure comline. "She's got twice as much service time and much more command experience. I've always sworn that if you gave me any special treatment I'd transfer to the Faal-Corum or one of the Shaman-class carriers, but I can't do that now. What I can do is transfer to another KIITH, which is precisely what I'll do if you don't give this promotion to somebody who actually deserves it!"  
  
"Whoa, calm down kid. It's not how it looks," Afras had reassured him. "Maala doesn't want command; I already asked her. I could move some Dreadnought skipper up in her place, but they'd most likely never listen to a word she said. My only option is to promote somebody that she can bend to her will but who'll take the flak if she screws up- you and I both know that the odds of that are one in ten to the power of my overdraft, but that's how she thinks."  
  
"Now that's what I call tactical thinking!" Kheran laughed. "Does she know that's why I'm getting the job?"  
  
"Probably, but if you even hint that we've had this conversation then I'll tell your mother who won the All-Ranks Erotic Fiction Championship three times running!" This had been one of Afras's sillier morale-boosting exercises, though there had been times when morale had needed all the help it could get, from which Kheran had retired undefeated. Afras had not been on the judging panel [he'd come fifth], and Kheran had taken great care to ensure that nobody knew who he was related to, so this dubious honour was won solely on his own merits.  
  
"It's a deal. It goes without saying that I'd infinitely prefer to stay in Acolytes, but out of a sense of duty I shall accept the promotion." //And Sajuuk help you if I find out that she really DID want the job,// he added mentally.  
  
Two days later, Kheran was sitting in his command chair for the first time. "I have to admit," he remarked to Maala, "this is a lot better than an Acolyte cockpit." Somtaaw's primary fighter design had originally been fitted out for short defensive jaunts into space, with standard doctrine leaving them at ready in the hangar bay rather than patrolling alongside the Command Ship, so litle attention had been paid to crew comfort. The pilot compartments were unpressurised and unheated, and the artificial gravity systems were just powerful enough to remind one that the seat padding wasn't all it might have been. Despite the radically different role played by the Acolyte in recent times, this had yet to be rectified. In Kheran's opinion this was the only area in which the rather more plushly appointed Blade scored over the Acolyte.  
  
"I couldn't comment, sir," she replied. "I've never commanded anything smaller than a resource collecter." She eyed the bag of boiled sweets on the arm of his chair with some suspicion. "Those aren't good for you, you know."  
  
"So my mother tells me," Kheran replied pointedly. "Healthier than smoking, though." They had been part of a successful effort to quit earlier that year, becoming a habit in themselves.  
  
"So, what have they dreamed up to keep me out of trouble while I learn the ropes?" he asked, offering her the bag. Maala declined.  
  
"We're to rendezvous with a detachment from the Third Fleet, and proceed via a recently discovered slipgate to Kharak. We want to find out if anybody's left." Her voice faltered slightly. Kheran knew that she'd lost virtually everybody to the Imperials. She rallied magnificently, however. "The ecosystem may well have recovered by now, and we know from declassified shiplogs that many orbital settlements went undetected by the Imperial fleet. Somebody must be alive, and they may even be back on the surface."  
  
"Let's hope so, anyway. Is this a Somtaaw only thing, or are the other kiithid sending ships?"  
  
"Just us. Nabaal blocked a joint mission in the Diamaid; reading between the lines I'd say they don't want the status quo upset." Nabaal had been steadily trying to outshine all other kiithid by numbers and military might since the Mothership had landed. Legislation had been hastily passed forcing all kiith mergers involving the allegiance of more than 1000 individuals to be subject to a council vote to try and level the playing field a bit, after Nabaal threatened to become more powerful than the Kiith Council itself.  
  
Kheran sighed deeply. "Ah, kiith politics. You know, half the reason I decided to become a fighter pilot was so that all that crap wouldn't be my problem. Until now it's worked."  
  
"That, sir," Maala said with a slight smile, "is life. You might as well get used to it."  
  
"True," he admitted. "Well, at least I've got a few weeks to make all my mistakes where nobody's going to notice."  
  
This was a statement that Kheran was to reflect upon somewhat later, and he came to the conclusion that the only thing he said that was more wildly inaccurate was this:  
  
"Nice gentle learning curve, anyway." 


	3. Through The Wormhole

"Um, isn't that just a tiny bit extreme for a reconissance mission?" Kheran said slowly, surveying the huge fleet sent by Somtaaw Command. The orders had specified a detachment from the Third Higarran Defence Fleet, which was a jointly run force of warships from all the spacefaring kiithid. What they hadn't said anything about was almost every Somtaaw ship in said fleet, some 15 percent of its total strength, being sent along.  
  
"Two Dreadnoughts, five Deacon-class destroyers, thirty-odd frigates... bloody hell, ALL SIX of the new Oracle-class cruisers!" The Oracle was the latest idea to come out of the Faal-Corum's outstanding ship design section. It resembled, in the words of one observer, 'a Turanic Ion Array Frigate on speed.' It borrowed the magnetic web arrays from the Assassin frigate, using them to boost the power of either a fixed-forward heavy ion cannon or six turrets mounted along the hull, basically similar to those of a Dervish. Two large swarmer drone bays had also been fitted along each side, holding 24 drones between them, and a small plasma turret was perched precariously atop each of the four mag-arrays. A variant replaced the ion turrets with standard heavy guns, and the forward ion cannon with a scaled-down Siege Cannon- the mag-arrays boosted the blast's range considerably. Two of this variant had been built so far, along with four standard types, and for some bizarre reason the whole shebang had been assigned to the Kuun-Lan.  
  
The Oracle was the only totally new ship designed by Somtaaw since the Battle of Nomad Moon, though there had been several near-total redesigns. The Hive Frigate had become the basis of a new repair craft, with PDA systems replacing the forward guns and the swarmer complement reconfigured as repair drones. There hadn't been a firm decision on a class name yet, but in an irreverent swipe at the tradition of religious designations it had been christened the 'Faith Healer' class by some anonymous wit, and this seemed likely to stick.  
  
The Ramming Frigate had also been somewhat enhanced beyond its role as a heavy tug/impromtu self-propelled battering ram. Six small turrets had been fitted at various points, and four docking stations for Acolytes allowed it to be used as a ferry craft. It made for an excellent resource-gathering mission escort, and still worked fine for shifting asteroids around.  
  
The Kuun-Lan herself had recieved significant upgrades to turn her into a proper ship of the line. A seventh turret had been added beneath the Worker docking pads, covering the delicate external construction gear; more than one strikecraft had sat under there and blasted away with impunity until being forcibly evicted by Somtaaw fighters. The most impressive modification was a row of six twin plasma bomb turrets on each side, mounted on the long spar between the engines and bridge. Their field of fire was very limited, but a single broadside could cripple a frigate.  
  
Additionally, all capital ships were now fitted with the results of a collaboration between kiith Sjet and the Taiidani Republic's military research division; point defence turrets. They were a much smaller version of the turret on the Dirvaas Multi-gun corvette, configured for shooting down missiles, mines and other small targets. They weren't especially effective against fighters, but carriers, Chieftan resource controllers and the two Explorer motherships had had their main armament recently refitted in an 'ack-ack' configuration to give a better rate of fire at the expense of damage per blast. Something similar had been done to all strikecraft guns, finally making them as useful for dogfighting as the old mass drivers had been. The Kuun-Lan maintained six fighter squadrons; four of Acolytes, one of Seekers and one of the extremely secret Bentusi ion fighters. The latter didn't get used often, as it had turned out that the ship that had handed the schematics over had done so on its own initiative without consulting the rest of the Unbound. To replace the Acolyte with such craft or even use them except in time of war or emergency would therefore have led to awkward questions, which Somtaaw's kiith-sa decided that he could do without. They also kept three Sentinel squadrons and four Workers aboard.  
  
Kheran saw very little prospect of needing any of this stuff on this particular mission, and was decidedly confused. "Politics again," was Maala's verdict. "Somebody's showing off."  
  
"Yeah, guess so. They've certainly kept it quiet in the media; didn't want to get everybody's hopes up in case..." Kheran tailed off awkwardly. "Sorry."  
  
"Don't be. I've had more than thirty years to get over it. I know what the chances of anybody surviving are as well as anybody; I saw the surface of Kharak for myself." She straightened. "We'd better head for the slipgate."  
  
Kheran tried hard not to look as uncomfortable as he felt; he'd heard plenty of stories about slipgates, and like many pilots he posessed a superstitious streak.  
  
It was a thirty minute hyperspace jump, taking them into the Faal-te dark matter cluster, a region of space that was legendary for weird stories. Fleets had allegedly disappeared in this region, only to emerge hundreds of years later- or earlier, in one or two cases. Weirdly enough, these latter had been said to occur at around the same time as some remarkable advances in shiptech by the Taiidan. Kheran wasn't entirely certain what to make of that, but he still didn't entirely trust slipgates. Nobody really understood how they worked, and no amount of scans by probes traversing them had yielded any conclusive information about the physics involved. It was known that there was a time dilation effect -transit usually took about eight minutes, but as far as the rest of the universe was concerned you were only in there for a millisecond- so such legends were scientifically plausible.  
  
Kheran regarded the slipgate through the bridge viewport with an air of deep suspicion. "I hate these things," he muttered to himself. Maala nodded in sympathy. "They give me the creeps too, sir. Beats taking the long way around, though."  
  
"Yeah, s'pose so. Helm, take us in."  
  
"Aye sir. Zero two three, five degree down angle and slow ahead."  
  
Slowly, the Kuun-Lan entered the slipgate.  
  
The big ship exited it in a blaze of light, to find the fleet already there. "Huh? That's weird..." Kheran said, then tailed off as he glanced at the time/date readout. It read ERROR.  
  
"What's gone wrong with the clock?"  
  
"Conn, nav. Something's wrong, sir. My charts are off. Galactic drift factors are out of sync, I, I..."  
  
"Check archives and future projections, as far as we have both ways. Find out just what the hell that slipgate's done!" Maala snapped. Kheran was already at the communications station, where the duty officer trying to get a phased telemetry line through the slipgate to Hiigara to get a mission update. He turned to his Tactical Officer and shrugged helplessly.  
  
"Well, looks like we're ahead of schedule," he said with a faint and slightly bitter smile. "So much for a gentle learning curve, then. Did I do anything to deserve this on my first day?"  
  
"Sajuuk..." the navigator breathed. "Skipper, you need to see this!" Maala shot him a look for his informality, but the navigator was Kheran's age and had got drunk with him at least twice, so she figured that it was scarcely a court-martial offence.  
  
"So," Kheran said cheerfully, "how far ahead of schedule are we?"  
  
"Well, I can't be a hundred percent accurate, but I don't think the Mothership has even left the Scaffold yet."  
  
"Oh." Kheran blinked a couple of times. "Bloody hell," he concluded. "We can... we're probably SUPPOSED to...!"  
  
"Conn, signals. Afras-sa is on the line. Audio-only at this range."  
  
"Put him on the main speaker," Kheran ordered. "And I'll bet he knew all about this. Kuun-Lan recieving, sir."  
  
"I assume you've realised that something's up," Afras replied. "From where you're sitting the Mothership leaves the Scaffold in three weeks. Your revised orders are as follows. You are to render any and all assistance to the defence of Kharak, the Mothership's voyage and the overthrow of the Taiidani Imperium, except supplying any of your weapons or shiptech; the Galactic Council is going to go crazy as it is."  
  
"I'd guessed that much," Kheran replied. "And you didn't mention any of this beforehand because...?"  
  
"...you would have thought I'd gone mad," Afras said, sounding amused. "Now go bring 'em home, kid. Bring 'em ALL home." The call ended.  
  
"O-kay. Let's start changing history!" Kheran said authoritatively. "Signals, have the senior COs from the fleet come aboard for a planning conference. I want every good tactical thinker we've got working on this. Maala, you and I are going to start working on some scenarios. There's three hundred million people depending on us to get this right. Mr Davin, you have the bridge!"  
  
There followed a two-hour planning session, during which they roughed out a basic plan. "If they pull in absolutely everything they have in this sector, things should be roughly equal in a straight fight," a veteran Dervish skipper in charge of a small frigate group concluded. "If they approach in a tight attack formation so that they can concentrate firepower they could do a fair bit of damage." Kheran nodded thoughtfully.  
  
"That's standard doctrine for the Imperial fleet," he agreed. "Our ships will have an edge both in forward speed and turret coverage. If they can dodge or weather the initial volley then they'll be able to score some pretty serious hits. Trouble is, the ion cannons on a Kwaar-Jet cruiser'll put quite a dent in a Dreadnought. How a smaller ship would fare I hate to think. If we could mess their formation up a bit we'd go through them like a mass driver round through a teabag!"  
  
"That's one way of putting it," one of the Oracle commanders said with a barely suppressed chuckle. "Hmm. Before they came up against the repulse weapon the Republic have started fitting to their cruisers, standard Imperial assault tactics had them advancing all in one big group, close together so the could mass their fire better. A seige cannon burst or three would bugger that up nicely."  
  
"Good thinking," Maala replied. "Now, what about fighters?"  
  
"I reckon they're best left to their own devices and told to concentrate on enemy strikecraft. We can call in missile strikes at about subgroup strength [four ships, one third of a typical squadron] as and when we need them. Most squadron leaders can prioritise targets better than a combat controller any day," Kheran said. "Ask any Acolyte pilot." He refrained from brushing imaginary dust from his Distinguished Piloting Citation ribbon, but he had never made a secret of his opinion that nobody knows how to use fighters better than somebody who'd flown in combat for themselves. And he ought to know.  
  
"Sounds sensible," was Maala's verdict. "In an engagement like this the big boys are best left to themselves." Kheran wasn't sure what to make of this one, but he knew from bitter experience that when Command needed you to help take out a capital ship above about destroyer size then things were seriously 'fubar.'  
  
"Right, that's Kharak more or less planned out- we can work out the little details with the local defence forces once we get there. How about the Kaar-Suuliem?" put in a destroyer captain whose father had been lost aboard that ship. "I know Kharak's a priority, but..."  
  
"Nobody gets left out; Afras-sa said get 'em all home, and by Sajuuk that's what we're going to do. I'll detach three ramming frigates and a fighter squadron," Kheran replied. "That should be enough to make even a Chieftan-class carrier think twice. 57th Squadron perhaps?" The 57th Somtaaw Attack Squadron, aka the Renegades, had the best anti-pirate record in the kiith. They were also Kheran's old outfit.  
  
"Is that such a good idea, sir?" said the Kuun-Lan's new fighter wing OC, unusually hailing from the ship's sole Seeker reconissance fighter squadron. "Their squad leader's only been in command for a couple of days."  
  
"I'd noticed," Kheran replied, getting a general laugh. "No, Deke'll do just fine. Besides, I'd been CO for about as long when I took on the Naggarok, and I did okay. Compared to that, a bunch of Turanic Raiders are nothing.  
  
"Okay, that's everything. We move out as soon as the 57th are paired with the frigates." They saluted as one, and filed out. Only Maala remained. "Not bad for a rookie, Kheran." She'd readily agreed to dropping rank in private. "I remember your uncle back when he was first in charge of this old girl." She patted the bulkhead affectionately, clearing up her nominal commander's confusion about who she was referring to. "He was strutting around like he knew it all, and it took him three months and five pirate attacks to learn different. He said he was moving up the one person he trusted not to do the same thing."  
  
"Yeah, he said that to me," Kheran said. "Although he also said you didn't want to be the one who gets blamed if everything goes tits-up because you missed something."  
  
"When was the last time THAT happened?" she retorted in mock-irritation. "Come on, we'd better get back to the bridge before Davin plots a hyperspace course straight into the middle of a star or something."  
  
"Do you trust ANYBODY to look after this old boat when you aren't on the bridge? Uncle Afras is right, you really have focused all your maternal instincts on the Kuun-Lan!" Laughing and shaking his head, Kheran went to reclaim the Big Chair. 


	4. The Battle of Kharak

Four days later, the fleet emerged from hyperspace above Kharak. The surface glowed a sullen yellow, reflecting harsh sunlight. //Sheesh,// Kheran thought to himself, //what the hell did we do to deserve ending up here? I suppose nobody in their right mind would go to the trouble of invading the place, at least.//  
  
"It's good to be back," Maala said from behind him. Kheran thanked He Whose Hand Shapes What Is that he hadn't given voice to his thoughts. "It might not be much of a vacation spot, but it's still my home." A lot of those who'd been born on Kharak felt that way about the 'old country'. The Hiigara-born generation, Kheran included, had never really understood. Kharak's suitability for colonisation had been described in Taiidan official survey records as 'marginal, with strong probability of coditions deteriorating within in next few centuries.' In other words, 'It's a desolate hole now, and things can only get worse.' The Kuun-Lan's commander was bright enough not to remark upon this, however.  
  
"We're five k short of the Immediate Launch Response Perimeter, but the missile defences can still hit us," Kheran warned the weapons officer. "Bring the point defence array online, but leave all other weapons systems powered down. Let's not cause any more heart attacks than we can help, hmm?"  
  
"Aye, sir. Hello! Just about every missile battery in the hemisphere just let fly, rules of engagement or no rules of engagement. Brown trousers across the board, methinks," the weapons officer said laconically. "PoDef guns tracking, locked on and... all missiles down. No impacts or blast damage."  
  
"We REALLY need to think up a better acronym than that. Signals, switch to standard Kushan military frequency." Kheran cleared his throat, waiting for his cue.  
  
"Frequency open, sir."  
  
"Right. Ahem... Attention, Kharak Missile Defence Command, this is the Hiigaran warship Kuun-Lan. Apologies for scaring you. Can you put me through to the kiith council?"  
  
"Um, yes. Of course." The voice at the other end sounded confused. "I'll patch you through now." There was a short interlude.  
  
"This is the Inner Council chamber. Merak Nabaal-sa recieving. Now, would you care to explain what in the seven equatorial hells is going on?"  
  
"I would prefer to discuss the exact details face-to-face, but I must warn you that Kharak is in grave danger. I request an audience with the Planetary Defence Committee." Kheran prayed quietly that nobody would remember the stories in some of the more obscure versions of the holy writings about 'a Destroyer come in Peacemaker's guise'. That would NOT have made his job any easier.  
  
"We will discuss your request once we have learned more from you. I ask that you present yourself before the council as soon as possible."  
  
"Understood," Kheran replied. "A shuttle will launch within the hour." He waited until the transmission ended before gently banging his head on his chair's pop-up console. "More bloody politics. I'd better go and find my dress uniform, I suppose. And Maala? Before you start wearing that smug see-why-I-didn't-want-the-job look of yours, I'm going to need the most able officer in this command down there with me. So you'd better go and find yours as well."  
  
"Listen," Kheran pleaded to the council, "I know how fantastical it must sound. However, what you must believe is that when the forces that exiled us here discover that we are capable of returning to reclaim our world then they will seek to obliterate our whole civilisation. In my time only half a million people out our whole race survived; the Taiidan wiped out everybody on the surface and then turned their guns on the Scaffold and the cryo-trays. You must trust me!"  
  
"I believe it, if only because anybody could invent a more plausible lie," interjected Somtaaw's kiith-sa. "You would!" a voice replied. "You probably had a hand in organising this deception!"  
  
"You dare accuse me of treachery? Where is your proof!" The council session broke down into argument, and further down into exchange of abuse. The elected official whose role was to maintain some semblance of order banged his gavel ineffectually. Kheran exchanged rather harassed looks with him, and pulled his service pistol from its dress holster. He hadn't expected to need it, but he still kept it loaded.  
  
BANG! BANG! Silence fell. "Thank you," Kheran said wearily. "Now, do you believe me or don't you? Am I a liar, or am I really here to help defend your world and people?"  
  
"I say he speaks the truth," a new yet hauntingly familiar voice remarked over the general communications system. "I have searched the personnel and Sleeper lists. Kheran is not listed; by his own account, he has not yet been born here." Fleet Command paused, waiting for the uproar. It came, but mercifully tailed off. "Let her finish," called several council members who, whilst yet to be entirely convinced by his story, found Kheran's approach to the matter of crowd control highly efficient. Anybody who could get the kiith council to shut up deserved respect.  
  
"However," Fleet Command continued, "Maala Kenrac is listed as one of the support crew. If there is any remaining doubt, then I shall have a DNA comparison test arranged."  
  
//Thank you, thank you, thank you!// Kheran breathed, wishing he'd dragged Maala in here as well. Last time he'd seen her she was deep in conversation with the leaders of the various fighter units.  
  
Shortly thereafter, the two of them were in conference with the same fighter group commanders. Kheran pressed a button, and the wall screen of the little conference room flickered to life. It showed a schematic of the space around Kharak. The Kuun-Lan and the bigger ships were shown as small and surprisingly detailed representations, the rest as green dots. Kheran pressed another button, and a Saarkin-Cho carrier, a couple of desroyers and a dozen or so red dots appeared. [Author's note: any resemblance between this description and the Sensors Manager is completely intentional]  
  
"That's what they plan to send to deal with Kharak," Maala explained. "The Kaar-Suuliem is being dealt with separately, but the force they're sending isn't up to much. It can wipe out an unarmed research ship, but that's about it. However, it's likely that when they realise that Kharak has additional protection, the Imperials will send everything they have. The most they can scrape together is this." Several more destroyers, a couple of cruisers, a second carrier and a lot more red dots appeared. The others winced.  
  
Wordlessly, Kheran tapped a few more controls. Three blinking yellow circles moved towards the Taiidan fleet. Several ships disappeared. The greens moved in to finish the job. "I've left strikecraft out of this display, but the enemy will be using theirs against surface targets and the Scaffold. That's where you guys come in. We only have five squadrons, but they have a couple of dozen. We'll need all the help we can get from you. Exact tactics and deployment are down to you, but I've found that the less centralised the command structure the better it is for pilots."  
  
"Spoken like a Manaan," replied one of the fighter group leaders. Kheran figured that this was meant to be complimentary.  
  
"Well, we've got three weeks to rehearse, unless they were monitoring the slipgate exit or something..." An alarm began to scream. "Attention!" boomed a tannoy. "Large group of hyperspace signatures at extreme detection range. Ship profiles consistent with Taiidan military capital ships. All personnel to combat stations!"  
  
"Typical," Kheran grumbled as they ran for the shuttle. "Even a beauracracy like the Empire's can get into gear when a huge battle fleet from the future turns up, I suppose."  
  
He reached the bridge minutes later, slightly out of breath. "Sitrep!" he yelled at nobody in particular.  
  
"It's worst case, sir," replied the sensors officer. "Everything we were worried about has happened."  
  
"No worries," Kheran said more confidently than he actually felt. "Deploy all Sentinel squadrons; they know what to do."  
  
One Sentinel unit formed a forcefield around the Scaffold and the Mothership -at Kheran and Fleet Command's combined insistence, the cryo trays had been towed into close orbit around the next planet along with a pair of Dervishes covering them- whilst the other two made for Kharak itself.  
  
"This had better work," one Sentinel pilot remarked.  
  
"Went alright around Hiigara, didn't it?" replied a colleague. "And Kharak's half the size with only the poles mattering much." Sentinels had been involved in a feasibility study regarding a permanent planetary forcefield system in orbit of the Homeworld. The purpose-built satellites were due to go online in a month or so.  
  
Meanwhile, Kheran looked thoughtfully at his sensor screen repeater. "Standard wall formation, with the carriers and a couple of Tiifal defence field frigates hanging back. This is going to be funny," he grinned. "Weapons, target the main gun at the centre of the formation. Signals, have the Oracles target the flanks. Everybody else is to keep a safe distance until they go off." He rubbed his hands gleefully.  
  
"Charging main gun now," the weapons officer reported, hastily calculating the impact point from the blast's rate of travel and the enemy force's closure. "Range set. Three, two, one..." The whole ship shook violently as the huge fireball blasted away. "Fire in the hole!"  
  
Sensing the danger, the Imperial ships began to veer off in all directions. Two assault frigates collided, detonating in a flash. Then the seige cannon blast detonated in the midst of the fleet. Half a dozen ships were vaporised instantly, with still others tumbling across the void to explode moments later.  
  
"Perfect hit!" Maala reported in grim triumph. "Casualty estimates exceeded by seventeen percent, and their formation is in total disarray."  
  
"Signal the fleet to engage independently," Kheran replied. "Helm, take us towards those carriers at flank speed. Main armament, fire at will!" He turned to Maala. "See if you can't get rid of those Tiifals with ramming frigates. We'll give those carriers something to think about."  
  
"If you're thinking what I am, then I like the way your mind works," Maala replied. "I'll do what I can, but everybody's got their hands pretty full out there." She wasn't kidding.  
  
The Imperials had quite quickly realised that they still outnumbered the Somtaaw by a good margin, and were in a position to group their fire on a single ship. This worked fairly well against the biggest ships, but most frigates were able to literally fly circles around the Taiidani vessels. The remaining missile destroyers were finding that their armament was nearly useless against the point defence equipped capital ships, and turned on the strikecraft darting among the big engagements, with limited success. Arrow scouts and the Kuun-Lan's Seeker squadron were actually faster than the missiles, and even Acolytes and the Mothership's Blade interceptors gave a tracking system designed for targets the size of frigates a hard time. At this stage it was hard to say who had the upper hand, and things seemed fairly even.  
  
The Kuun-Lan moved slowly through the battle, turrets blasting at anything that came into view. The Taiidan had little time to fire on an oversized carrier, and had yet to realise the full, deadly potential of the monolithic vessel. It was raked by one or two opportunistic ion blasts, but no other damage was taken.  
  
Aboard one of the Imperial carriers, the fleet commander was getting worried. Her fleet was getting steadily worn down, and that huge ship was moving steadily towards the carriers. She spoke to the fighter direction officer. "Get a bomber group to make a couple of runs at that thing. I'll try and get one of the cruisers to engage it as well. What in-?" One of those ramships slammed into a defence field frigate, pushing it out of position. A second ramship smashed into the other guard frigate, crumpling its fusion drive array and immobilising it.  
  
"This is very, very bad."  
  
The Kuun-Lan slid between the two carriers. "Side turrets, volley fire!" Kheran ordered. The dozen twin turrets opened up, hurling raw plasma at the carriers. The turrets were fed directly from the main engine, and a concentrated volley could shred a frigate. Three blasts destroyed one carrier and severely damaged the other. Apparently the fleet commander realised that things were now becoming hopeless, and the Imperials hyperspaced out. Their strikecraft were abandonned, and hastily shut down their engines and weapons. Frantic messages of surrender were broadcast from the Imperial fighters, and also from a seriously damaged heavy cruiser that hadn't made it into hyperspace.  
  
"All Taiidan strikecraft, you are ordered to set down aboard the Mothership. You will be offered asylum, and a position in our fighter corps," Fleet Command informed them. "Your own military has abandonned you, and we offer a chance to strike back for your betrayal. If you do not wish to join us, you will be regarded as prisoners of war and be treated accordingly, which does NOT mean the same thing as it would in the Empire."  
  
"The pay's better with us, too," Kheran added. There was nervous laughter from the Taiidani pilots. Kheran turned his attention to the cruiser. "Same goes for all of you. We need all the manpower we can grab."  
  
"I will allow my crew to decide for themselves," the ship's captain replied. "In the meantime, we have taken many casualties and we require medical aid. The political officer is trying to organise the marines to attack anybody coming through the airlocks, and some of them are listening. You will need armed guards."  
  
"Thanks for the warning," Kheran said. "I'll arrange it. Kuun-Lan out. Maala, pack our workers with med-response teams, and a few assault troopers for protection. Better give the docs sidearms as well; that poor bastard'll have a war onboard his ship in a few minutes."  
  
"Right. I take it that we're keeping the cruiser for ourselves?"  
  
"And we would want one precisely why?" Kheran replied mildly. "Fleet Command's welcome to it, if they actually want such an utterly useless ship design. They can back engineer the shiptech, I guess. It'll only be much cop for that and learning important lessons about the importance of wide turret coverage in a combat situation."  
  
All in all, the Hiigarans had fared well. Half a dozen fighters had been destroyed, for the loss of two pilots who had been unable to eject. A few capital ships had been pretty badly shot up, but none had been lost. "Damn good start," Kheran concluded.   
  
Half a lightyear distant, the commander of the battered fleet exchanged exceedingly worried looks with her political officer, with whom she was unusually united in acute, bowel-loosening terror.  
  
"I'll inform his majesty in my report that you were in no way responsible for the failure of our objective, and kept our losses to the very minimum they could have been." He fingered his collar. "Of course, he'll just proportion the blame equally as a result."  
  
"Oh. He's going to be annoyed, isn't he," the fleet commander said slowly. He gave a hollow laugh.  
  
"Annoyed isn't the word. He's going to be so pissed he'll have to invent entirely new sorts of cruel and unusual punishment especially for the two of us, and just about everybody who can't get out of the way fast enough."  
  
"Sometimes I wish I'd stayed at home with my kids. But I just had to get ambition, didn't I?" she muttered. "Oh, well. I'd better go make my report." 


	5. All Speed For Home!

The hyperdrive test was completed as planned, with the Kaar-Suuliem waiting for the Mothership. It had taken a few stray gun bursts, but was basically unharmed. The guard force were largely without any damage, though one Acolyte had lost an outrigger wing. They returned in triumph.  
  
"The Imperials are going to realise that we've got two things to look out for," Maala said to Kheran. "We cannot give adequate protection to the Mothership AND Kharak."  
  
"Well, we'll send Kharak right to the bottom of their priority list," Kheran replied. "A fast strike against one of their big bases in this region should solve that problem."  
  
"Many of those bases have civilian populations," Maala reminded him. "I'd prefer a military-only target."  
  
"We don't have to blow it up. If we take out the guard force and the defence systems, we can board the facility and take control of it. We storm the command deck, take control of the facility and hand it over to the rebels. We'd need the help of the Mothership's ground assault forces, so I'll talk it over with Fleet Command, but it's at least worth looking at."  
  
"I'll dig up everything Intelligence has on those worldships. It isn't a lot, but it'll be enough to do a feasibility study."  
  
Kheran got through to the Mothership's Fleet Intelligence officer. "It sounds crazy," he said. "Drawing the Taiidan's attention away from Kharak makes sound tactical sense, but strorming a major enemy installation would entail hundreds of casualties."  
  
"We'd only deploy our specialist boarding troops initially, and the bulk of our forces would only board once the major resistance was being broken up," Kheran countered. "It sounds risky, I know, but your opposite number over here is running some projections about how it would go. Can I ask you to reserve judgement until they're complete?"  
  
"That's fair enough," he replied. "I'd like to have my people go over your data for ourselves, as well."  
  
"By all means. I'll arrange it as soon as possible. Kuun-Lan out."  
  
The intelligence officer sat back thoughtfully. //This is a guy from a mining kiith talking? Boy, things have changed. Or are going to change, I suppose.// He decided to put it to Fleet Command.  
  
"It might just work. If anybody bring this off, Kheran can." It didn't appear to have registered with her that Maala deserved most of the credit, the Intelligence officer mused, even though nobody had ascribed the success of the defence of Kharak to Maala more loudly than Kheran himself. "If he says it's worth a try then it's worth a try, even if he didn't think of it himself."  
  
"They're still evaluating the likelihood of success, but I'll tell them to assume that if they say 'go', we'll join the attack." The Intelligence officer sighed to himself, making absolutely certain he'd turned off his intercom. "I knew it. She's got a crush on him."  
  
"I can still hear you, you know," Fleet Command remarked half in annoyance, half in amusement. "Having a load of computer relays grafted to my body doesn't stop me taking an interest, you know."  
  
"Obviously. Not exactly an obvious choice, but if that's your thing..." Kheran was a gangling, vaguely bookish-looking man with untidy reddish brown hair, and one was left with the impression that he should have been living with his mother and writing computer viruses instead of flying combat missions.  
  
"Oh, shut up."  
  
The intelligence officer put his head in his hands. //My job just got a lot harder. Time travelling gung-ho lunatics and an infatuated Fleet Command were definitely not what I signed on for!//  
  
At the same time, the commander of the fleet sent to Kharak was making her report to Vytis, Proconsul to the Throne of Worlds, one of the few men whom the Emperor trusted. He was an honourable and humane man, who had done his best to contain the worst excesses of the regime, and was becoming more and more alarmed at his master's pogroms.  
  
"Thank you, commander. I can see no way in which blame can be apportioned to your command performance. Your withdrawl was the only way to save the fleet from more casualties. I will ensure that his majesty's wrath is directed away from you and towards the enemy fleet." He paused. "Take the survivors of your battle group to the nearest outpost in order to effect repairs, and have all battle telemetry sent to the Strategic Planning Department and my personal databank."  
  
"Yes, Proconsul. Thank you." The call ended.  
  
//Marvellous,// Vytis thought to himself. //What now? His majesty will be greatly displeased, and want to execute half the command crews, alienating even more of the fleet. I cannot contain the planners of the coup for much longer, and this could well be the last straw!//  
  
Vytis knew of the coup planned against the Emperor. He had been approached by them, but had refused to plot against his master. For Vytis was a man of great loyalty to the throne, despite what the Emperor had become. He had persuaded the cabal of senior military and economic figures to hold off for the moment. The Emperor was thinking of abdicating soon, and Vytis was to be his successor.  
  
The Emperor was reclining on a lengthy couch, reading today's newspaper. There weren't as many pictures of him as he would have liked, but it had been a slow day for news. He glanced up. "Ah, Vytis. What news of the assault on that world... Arak?"  
  
"Kharak, sire," Vytis replied. "And the news is decidedly bad. That fleet that came through a nearby slipgate -you recall the report from our automatic monitoring system?- turned out to possess weapons the like of which we have never imagined. The battle group was forced to retreat."  
  
"Vytis, my mind is not all it was, so remind me," the Emperor said in a tone of deadly calm. "Did you not assign every ship within lightyears to counter this new force?"  
  
"I did sire, but now it looks as if we would have need virtually every ship in the Fleet to do any real damage. If you will permit me, sire, I will show a recording taken by the flagship of cruier squadron 35C; one of our best. This ship was positioned approximately midway between the centre of the formation and the trailing edge of the right flank. The commander has always avoided a formation that suggests an obvious leader, to avoid drawing concentrated fire on his flag. You can see the enemy fleet here," he pointed to a cluster of indistinct outlines on the poor-quality visual image. "The fleet is closing at best speed, leaving only a couple of magnetic field defence ships to guard the carriers."  
  
"I can't see any movement from the other fleet," the Emperor said thoughtfully. "What are they waiting for?"  
  
"This," Vytis replied. Three glowing points of light accelerated away from the distant craft, becoming larger and clearer. The Emperor nodded thoughtfully. "Ah, I see. Fusion spheres; R&D has been working on such a thing. Intended to disrupt the formation, no doubt, but I fail to see why this should so disadvantage the fleet that..." The fireballs exploded, and the image dissolved into static as the recording system at least was wrecked. "Oh, Gods."  
  
"Eighteen ships destroyed outright, a couple of dozen badly damaged, and the formation in tatters," Vytis said grimly. "And that was before the fleet attacked. It was nearly a disaster. If they hadn't pulled out quickly things would have been much worse."  
  
"How much did we learn of their capabilities?" the Emperor asked; he hadn't got where he was by being slow to draw profitable lessons from setbacks.  
  
"We're still going through the data collected in the field, but the anecdotal descriptions from the fleet commander are decidedly worrisome. Energy-based weapons that can inflict three times the damage of equivalent mass driver fire. Unmanned combat drones too small and manoeverable for even a scout fighter to target. Some kind of frigate with ion canon turrets, when we can barely fit a single particle accelerator into a frigate chassis. A carrier-type ship the size of a Turanic outpost with twice the armament of a heavy cruiser." He looked helplessly at his master. "Sire, if even half of this is true then we are extremely fortunate that our casualties were only twenty percent."  
  
"Did they suffer any casualties in return?" the Emperor said hopefully.  
  
"No losses besides a few fighters, but they think they damaged some ships pretty badly."  
  
The Emperor sank back, shaking his head. "What am I to do, Vytis?" he said in bewilderment.  
  
"Seek peace, sire. What else can we do? They will take their world back no matter what. Perhaps they will be satisfied with that."  
  
"And if they are not?" the Emperor said, and Vytis heard a new note in his voice.  
  
Fear.  
  
There was no resistance to the Kuun-Lan and her fleet. Every capital ship surrounding the huge vessel immediately entered hyperspace as the group arrived on the scene, and the fighters made desperate but ineffectual runs against Somtaaw ships who simply ignored their fire. The outpost hastily recalled them and broadcast a message of surrender. This caught Kheran by surprise.  
  
"His nibs on the throne won't like that. We didn't do THAT much damage to the fleet that went after Kharak, did we?"  
  
"We're the first people to defeat a Taiidan battle group in decades," Maala replied. "They're like most bullies. They run like hell any time they come up against a real opponent."  
  
"That's a bit harsh. They might be evil bastards but they've got balls of Stage 3 armour plating."  
  
"True," Maala admitted. "We must scare them even more than the Emperor."  
  
"Now THAT'S saying something."  
  
Three seconds later, every civilian ship sped away, and escape pods began jettisoning. "Martyrs, they must have set the self destruct!" The whole outpost exploded a few seconds later. It wasn't the huge cataclysmic blast that you see in the movies, but a series of carefully placed explosive charges -some three hundred in a ship that size- that turned the whole structure into floating wreckage.  
  
"Attention escape pods and transports, this is the Hiigaran warship Kuun-Lan. Do you require assistance, over?"  
  
"That's a negative, Kuun-Lan," a surprisingly calm voice replied. "A Rebel battle group is en route, and they'll retrieve us in an hour or so once it rendezvous with our guard fleet."  
  
"That explains a few things," Maala remarked. "The Taiidan are almost suicidally brave in combat."  
  
"Means we'll have to find something else to blow up, though."  
  
"Hardly," Kheran replied. "They aren't going to know it wasn't us, are they?"  
  
Lightyears away, Vytis stood by helplessly as the Emperor sat down and burst into tears. 


End file.
